Sometimes a Conch shell is just a Conch shell

I would agree with you about Piggy being somewhat cliched, if I hadn't met several people like him. He can't function without authority. I've met people like him to more or lesser degree.

You did well to notice my disclaimer. I think that some parallels might be drawn between the Foucault prison idea and the island and the eyes. I tend to think though that the oppressive feel of the book is intended to force the characters into their more bestial self, and into the realization of their nature. The focus on the eyes seems to me to be intended to show that the boys were being hunted even as they hunted.

The island is a prison in a sense, but in another sense its a stripping away more than a holding in.

Certainly there was an us/them mentality in the book. But again it points more to an aspect of human nature that divides than to a specific literary theory.

I don't mind a little Freudian interpretation, particularly since some of it seems deliberate, but at some point it gets absurd. We can't interpret every branch, log or vaguely cylindrical object as a phallic symbol. It gets overwhelming. I'll grant that the loss of the conch shell and his authority could be seen as a emasculation for Ralph, but I think a better interpretation surrender to the beast on the part of the boys on the island. If it is an emasculation its the emasculation of civilization.

Deconstructionalists have a point in that its impossible to be sure that you got exactly what the author intended, but the simple fact is that they use language to convey the thought that language can't accurately convey thought. Up to a point they are right in that I can't be sure I understand everything an author is getting at. However, when you read a book to a certain extent you understand it. You might understand something as deliberately obscure as The Sound and the Fury or Ullyses to a lesser extent than something that is more straightforward, but there is some understanding. So I'll grant them that there is uncertainty (sometimes a lot of uncertainty) in communication, but to say that no communication via language is possible is literally meaningless since they are communicating that idea through language. I'll go with uncertain, but impossible, no.

Your sense of the drowning and the hopelessness is exactly what I was referring to by Original Sin. That he offers no hope is the point. He's saying that we are essentially beasts. Simon was a mystic and could be seen as a religious figure, though I think that Christ figure would be a stretch. Piggy represents science and civilization (he's the giver of fire and the voice of reason) and both are killed as the boys descend into chaos.

That's why I said (I think I said) that its an attempt to describe the results of the Fall in non-religious terms. He doesn't see any hope. Only distraction.

As for the man on the parachute, I think he was mostly a plot device. Golding needed something that was demonstrobly not physically the beast, but that the boys could mistake for the beast.

Another reason I would be reluctant to use a deconstructuralist or Foucaultian viewpoint on the book, is that Golding (at least in this book) seems to be a Modernist. Sure the mish mash of ideas that became postmodernism were begining to form, but he seems to not be writing with that in mind. (You refered to Heart of Darkness, which could be seen as a legitimate progenitor or at least thematic precursor to this book. And Conrad was a sort of early or pre modernist.

Speaking of the book in terms of Modernism, it was refreshing to read a book that was not so self-referential and self conciously post modern. Don't get me wrong, there are postmodern writers I love (Percy, Jonathan Lethem, Neil Gaiman, some DeLillo and I guess you could count Borges) but sometimes its nice to have a story thats not constantly nudging you as if to say did you see that? Though there is something to be said for those types of books, but every once in a while its nice to read something in an older mode.

And yes, this is fun.